Joseph Sullivan:  

Telling my story is something that may take a while. Perhaps just the rudimentary details will work until the 50th reunion next summer. I am still having a time getting my head around the fact that we are about to face our half century mark since having graduated from high school. Following my graduation from CPHS I headed up to Ames, Iowa where I attended Iowa State University for a year. That first year away from home was rather typical for young men enjoying their first aste of freedom. While I didn't flunk out, I, at least, managed to get the attention of the dean and he was suggesting that perhaps I should find something more to my liking. I had been dwelling on similar thoughts for some time but was very worried that my poor, long suffering Mother would be heart broken. As it turned out, they were in complete agreement with the Dean. At that time the U.S. Army had a pretty good recruiting scheme where one could sign up for a three year stint and they would let one make a choice between a specific training course, or to select a location wehere one might serve one's overseas duty. So I was off to the recruiting office to sign up for a couple of years at an Army base in beautiful Hawaii. As we all know, things rarely turn out as expected, especially if one is expecting something really good. As I went thru the testing process to get into the army it seems that my test scores caught the eye of someone. So, rather than signing up and heading to basic training, the recruiting officer aske me if I might be interested in taking more tests. Well, they were paying the shots so I said I would love to do just that. I spent the next three weeks in various places, all at Army expense taking what seemed like endless exams. If you remember the famous Iowa Testss that we did every year than you should have a good idea of what I was doing. Three weeks of that with some physical tests thrown in just to make it interesting. Because of my wrestling experience I performed very well on their physical test having thrashed the sergent who meant to pound my lips off in one session of :self defence' workout. The long and the short of it is that I was sent back home to await the outcomes of all the tests and cool my heels. This all seemed very strange but not as strange as what happened next. An Army officer showed up and my house one day while I was home alone and asked if he could come in and talk to me. When he got inside he seemed rather strange in so far as he kept looking for someting; under the lamp shades, under the chairs, in the bookcase and so on. This, of course, piqued my interest so when we finally got down to talk I wasn't surprised too much when he asked me if I would be interested in joining the elite ASI, which, as he explained, was the Army Intelligence and Security agancy. So I was off to a huge adventure that still affects my life today. For the next 10 years I was, essentially, an operative for what was then knnown as NSA. Three, and a bit of that time was spent on active duty where I was assigned to the middle of the Anatolaen Plateau in Central Turkey. It was as far from my idea of Hawaii as it could get but it was a wonderful experience and I was allowed to be on and work out with the Turkish National Wrestling team which was the best in the world at that time. Following that I returned to Iowa State University to study Forestry and to be as much of a pain in the ass to the local 'Students for a democratic Society (SDS). That ended up with at least 32 arrests and convictions for espionage within the National SDS organization. Seems that they were messing about with the Strtigec Air defence Command. It was a simple enough plan where a couple of lovely young hippies would go to the local bars around Omaha where they would allow themselves to be picked up by a couple of SAC airmen who would then take them back to the girls apartment for some eagerly anticipated fun. The girls would excuse themselves to go 'slip into something more comfortablem and while they were out, the cops would come in the front door and discover that the Airmen had a good deal of drugs in their possession. Since the SAC bombers each have a dedicated crew it was possible to ground the SAC Bombers this way. This was a very serious threat to the USA. A clever plan that would have been better if the hippies involved had not found such a need to brag about their exploits with other SDS members. It was discovered by myself and another operative while we were assigned to gather or plant evidence on a couple at Iowa State. The fellow was the president of the Student council on campus and his live in girlfriend was the vice President. After completing the Foresty degree program I headed down to Texas to spend a year with t...Expand for more